Description
Include at LEAST SEVEN sources:
1 Article from a scholarly (academic) periodical
1 Book about your subject or related to your subject
5 Articles from other periodicals/ anthologies/ websites
Your outline must include the following elements:
(25%) A COMPLETE, COHERENT thesis statement, logically organized and correctly punctuated.
(25%) AT LEAST FIVE AND NO MORE THAN SEVEN body paragraph topic sentences which explain and/or support the thesis, and which follow the thesis ideas in order.
(25%) AT LEAST FIVE AND NO MORE THAN SEVEN quotations, properly cited, which explain and/or support EACH topic sentence, and which follow that topic sentence in order.
(25%) A PROPERLY FORMATTED works cited page listing ALL the sources used in your outline (you may use your preliminary works cited for this, if the source materials have remained the same).
You may write your outline in whatever form is comfortable for you. HOWEVER, be sure you
Write the outline in full sentences.
Use proper punctuation, especially in the quotations.
Include authors’ names and page numbers in your parenthetical citations.
Use the correct format for the works cited page (see Purdue OWL links).
My topic sentence I originally used was: “Although the death penalty was originally created to deter criminals from committing murder, it is actually much less effective than originally believed and extremely costly.” My professor did not think my topic sentences followed the ideas of the topic sentence so any changed you need to make to the thesis or the topic sentences is fine.
These are topic sentences that I used in past assignments. You can use these and change them however you want or make new ones.
1)One of the main logics behind the death penalty is to deter future homicides from occurring. However, different studies show that this is not the case. Instead, homicides may be postponed for a short while after an execution but ultimately continue to happen at the same rates or in some cases more frequently.
2)Considering its lack of benefits, capital punishment is extremely pricey, costing our country millions of dollars each year.
3)With a punishment as detrimental and permanent as the death penalty, there is always the risk of an innocent person being wrongly sentenced. In the case of the death penalty, there is no taking it back.
4)The death penalty is already and inhumane form of punishment as it is, but it is also extremely racially biased. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) (1998), Black Philadelphians are 3.9 times more likely to receive a death sentence as compared to other races.
5)The death penalty is a cruel punishment that makes a spectacle of the death of a human life. There are other ways to serve justice without playing God.